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Tobacco Center Faculty Blog

February 3, 2019

Maggie Kulik and I have already published two papers showing that, contrary to the “hardening hypothesis,” namely that there is a hard core group of smokers that “cannot or will not quit” that underlies the whole harm reduction ideology that is used to justify promoting e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products, and other new tobacco products. The first of these papers showed that, contrary to the hardening hypothesis, as smoking prevalence fell in the USA and EU, the remaining smokers smoked less and quit more. In other words, rather than hardening, the remaining smoking population is softening. The second paper found the same thing in people with psychological distress, a group with high baseline smoking rates.

February 3, 2019

Aaron Baum, I, and others just published “Estimating the long-run relationship between state cigarette taxes and county life expectancy” in Tobacco Control that contributes to the growing literature that tobacco taxes can help reduce health disparities. Using life expectancy data from all US counties from 1996 trough 2012, we found that a one-dollar increase in cigarette tax per pack (in 2016 dollars) translated to an increase in life expectancy of 1 year over the following decades, with the first 6-month increase in life expectancy appearing after 10 years. There was a larger life-expectancy benefit of increases in cigarette excise taxes in lower-income counties compared with higher-income counties, which is evidence that cigarette taxes can help reduce health disparities.

January 28, 2019

Philip Morris International's Foundation for a Smokefree World (FSFW), a thinly disguised part of the company's efforts to market its IQOS heated tobacco product and rehabilitate PMI's image, is seeking to partner with WHO.